Countdown to XY: A Nostalgia Thread

[Stellar]

I love reading all these posts. :]

Day 2: What was your first experience with a shiny Pokémon? (You can exclude Red Gyarados if you wish!)

I'd love more in-depth descriptions if possible.

28 days remain!

 

[Hulavuta]

Red Gyarados :|

To this day, I have never caught a legitimate shiny Pokemon, excluding the always-shiny Lake of Rage Gyarados. (Although my brother has caught like 3)

When I first found out about shinies, I didn't believe they could actually be found randomly in the wild, as in, random encounters without fulfilling any special conditions. This was because I had played so much and just by chance had never run into one, even though I figured that statistically speaking I should have run into at least one. Never have.

 

[Aries Flame]

Shiny Gravler - Safari Zone - SoulSilver
I saw it, then it was gone.

 

[LilOu]

Day 2: What was your first experience with a shiny Pokémon?

I remember that day too :[ I was playing my Pokémon Versione Argento once again, trying to get a Scyther at the bug catching contest. I was determined to win the first prize and to laugh at those bug-cacthers' faces because they suck nuts. While searching for the mantis, instead I found a Caterpie. It was weird, it wasn't green anymore...it was pink! (Shiny Caterpie was pink, now it's gold I guess)

I threw thousand Poké Balls at it until I caught it. It was awesome! Pink Caterpie! Who does not want to have that? It was at lvl 6, so I leveled it up with some Rattatas found in the outside of the Pokémon Day Care near Goldenrod City. It got to level 7. It evolved. I was like "what the hell, evolving a Pokémon at level 7???" Then I continued, amazed by that Caterpie, and it evolved again at level 10. A pink Butterfree. Level 10. Shiny. Level 10. Pink. Shiny. Level 10. Last evolution. Level 10.

I ended up with a conclusion: all shiny Pokemons evolve faster than the non shiny. I was innocent :[

Wait. Wasn't shiny Caterpie pink? Never mind, got confused. Anyways, that was the only shiny Pokemon I've ever caught besides the 15 times I captured the shiny Gyarados.

Almost 10 years have passed. Still no shiny Pokemons have appeared :[ They might be appearing while I use repel.

 

[khaozz13]

Usually, when I traverse long water routes, I carry a super repel or two. One day as I was rematching trainers in Sapphire, I decided to forgo the repels. As I was surfing back to Lilycove City, I ran into a Wingull. Not a regular one, but a beautiful shiny Wingull. She was my first Non-Gyarados shiny I ever found. I caught her with my trusty Net Ball and treasured her ever since.

I experienced a similar occurrence in FireRed when I was hunting for Suicune. My repel wore off and I forgot to respray. My first encounter? A shiny Rattata. Eat your heart out, Joey. Since then, I've never used a repel again (and kept running into shinies this way).

 

[5h!n!ng *******]

I never caught the Shiny Gyarados in the original Gold version. However, I saw a shiny Nidorina on Route 15 in Kanto, but my poor Jolteon's Quick Attack was too strong and killed it :(

That said, my first caught shiny was a Spinda on Ruby. I would catch two more shiny Spinda in Generation III, all encountered while EV training in Special Attack. I traded off one of my three shiny Spinda for a high-leveled Pickup Linoone and an additional TM26 in a Pokemon Rocks event in 2005. I was also hoping to get additional TM26s through Emerald's modified Pickup mechanics, but that never happened. I also obtained a shiny Shuppet in Emerald, but I don't remember how I encountered or received it (I don't recall catching it in the wild).

Meanwhile, on FireRed, I managed to catch a shiny Tentacool (while hunting for Lapras at Icefall Cave) and a shiny Pidgey on Route 2.

I went crazy with chaining shinies in Generation IV; among my new shinies were Ralts (female, unfortunately) and Gloom. My only shiny aside from chains and the Shiny Gyarados in HeartGold (x2, because I restarted HG recently) was a Patrat I found on my White version while EV training.

 

[Oopa]

Shiny Mudkip from poweroff/on on my Emerald in my quest to get a nice Mudkip- That Mudkip wasn't exactly very gifted in terms of IVs and Nature so it went into a virtual state of nothingness. But i took a picture of it still :)


and i think i have a shiny Bagon amidst my legions of Lvl5 DDancin' Bagon Babies

 

[Ausgirl]

Day 1: What is your first memory of Pokémon?

I was about ten and my brothers and I each got a Gameboy color and a pokemon game for Christmas. I remember getting the see-through purple Gameboy and Pokémon Red, from Target. It was my first ever game and I've stuck with the series ever since.

Day 2: What was your first experience with a shiny Pokémon?

I've had a few random encounters, I think the first was a shiny ratatta in HG. I found it while looking for a ditto.

 

[Its_A_Random]

One day, I was playing my old FireRed, walking around Seven Island in the grass, when suddenly...

I thought it was a regular Phanpy, something to run away from, when I heard the star animation. Hearing it, it suddenly triggered me to throw Poké Balls. It took two Ultra Balls, but it was caught. Going to the PC, I checked the little girl, & I spent like half an hour trying to see what the difference was. Lighter blue skin compared to normal blue skin was annoying see the difference... >_<

Nowadays, the little Phanpy has evolved into an orange-brown Donphan, & currently resides in my HeartGold game, where it takes part in the occasional Pokéathlon, my old FireRed since been reset & whatnot. At least it had an Impish nature, so it can be somewhat useful competitively, though no egg moves suck. I have found several more shinies from random encounters since (All caught), including Magikarp, Gastly, Swellow, & Audino, but my little Phanpy, now a Donphan, will always be my first ever, & my favourite shiny mon. :)

 

[Bull of Heaven]

Zubat, Rock Tunnel, Silver version. I'd never heard of non-Gyarados shinies before that, and while I was able to just accept it as an easter egg instead of a glitch or something, I thought it meant that there was a secret "green Zubat" to be found in Rock Tunnel in every copy of the game. Hopefully my brothers didn't waste much time looking for it in their games.

Funnily enough, I found my second non-Gyarados shiny just a short while later. This time it was a Drowzee on Route 34. I can't possibly remember for certain, but I might even have caught both of them on the same day. There definitely wasn't much time between them. I also found a shiny Donphan in Victory Road a while later, but couldn't catch it because my box was full (for any that don't know: prior to gen 3 you had to go to the PC and switch the active box after filling one, or the game wouldn't let you catch more Pokemon). And now the internal battery has died and taken the shinies I caught with it.

Much later, I caught a shiny Golbat, which I still have, in Ruby. So I guess Zubat's legacy kind of lives on.

 

[Roadagain]

To this day, I'm still yet to see a shiny Pokemon in the wild outside the Red Gyarados. Excluding that, a friend of mine (And his brother) encountered a shiny Trapinch and something else I cannot recall. We eventually ended with all of us having our own copies of it thanks to Emerald's cloning glitch.

Not a particularly interesting story there, but oh well

 

[Celever]

I always make sure I have 20 ultra balls with me in case I run into my first shiny.... still nothing! ;~;

 

[DHR-107]

Wow and I thought I had things bad with shinies...

My very first encounter with a non-Gyarados Shiny was a Miltank in second gen. At this point (after being colluded by the anime) I just honestly thought there were differently coloured Pokemon out there.

I never realised how rare she was and I later just reset the game to play through it again.... :| Even so, Gen 2 so she wouldn't be alive now anyway. I didn't encounter another shiny Pokemon until one of my (many) run throughs of Soul Silver, forgoing repels on the route to the Lake Of Rage. Boom Shiny Venonat appeared before me...

https://www.pokecheck.org/?p=detail&uid=1359438 :D 0 Ivs in Spcl Attk and Spcl Def mean its kinda useless competitively... But still it was my first proper shiny I had discovered. It took a long time before I found my next shiny... Infact my friend hatched it. I had some left over Tyrogue eggs from a team involving a Hitmontop, so I just gave him one of the eggs at random. He hatched it Shiny!

https://www.pokecheck.org/?p=detail&uid=1359385 I also haven't trained this little guy either. I haven't really decided what I should evolve him into really.

After that it was another long wait before my next shiny Pokemon. Infact, I wasn't looking at the screen when it happened... No sound either. I looked down and was about to kill the annoying Pidove which had spawned... And I thought "This looks a bit wierd". So I looked up the shiny and the normal sprites for Pidove. There is almost no difference between the two colours and if you haven't looked at Pidove for awhile its easy to mistake. I caught that one too :D

I live in absolute fear of not being able to catch the infamous shiny on Route 1. Luckily I have always had a few balls on me of various types so I can actually catch things like that which randomly appear.

 

[Level 51]

Heh, I still remember when my brothers were trying to catch the Red Gyarados in Crystal. It kept using Thrash and confusing itself and killing itself and both of them raged really hard because they had to restart (the Gyarados also destroyed their teams because they were underleveled >_<) lol! :p

As for me, I actually only found a non-Gyarados shiny in BW when I was EV-training my Pory-Z in a hurry. I got a Flame Body Litwick (which was like Rash and had some shitty IVs) but I used it on my Subway team because it was so cool :)))))))) plus I now associate the hotel where I was on holiday with that Litwick. :/

Then I discovered RNG abuse and suddenly shinies are boring -.- 9.9

And yes I got two Battle Factory shinies fml and curse you Stellar for making me play the Emerald Factory

 

[Cherub Agent]

My first Shiny was in Silver. I'd gotten bored of my old game (I never got up to the shiny Gyarados) and so I decided to restart. I chose totodile again as my starter, and I was completely freaked out when I saw that it was green instead of blue. I thought my game had glitched or something (I had no idea what a shiny was). I went to my dad and asked him why the game was already broken, and he looked really annoyed too, since it was only like a week old. He told me to just restart it and if the problem persisted we could take it back to the store. I restarted, and I got a good old regular Totodile again, and I was happy for a while. Then I came across the Red Gyarados, learned a bit more about shinies, and mentally kicked myself.

I also found a shiny Tentacruel in FireRed, with a CALM nature. I was really happy and managed to catch it, and just used it on my team throughout the rest of the game.

I'm also not sure why this is, but in that Battle Tower thingy in the Sevii islands one of the trainers has a Shiny Espeon. Is this like that in every game, or is it treated like a wild Pokemon and random :s

 

[Codraroll]

I too thought the Red Gyarados was something of an easter egg. I caught it, used it, and thought "Hey, Red Gyarados is cool. Wish they'd do stuff like that with more Pokémon".

Later in my Crystal game, I encountered a pink Magmar. "Was that a pink Magmar? Oh, now I get it, it's a Ditto having transformed into a Magmar! Cool, I didn't know they could do it like that."
Then I proceeded to Surf it to oblivion for the sake of training my Golduck. It took years before I understood what I had done.

It was on FireRed I found the first Shiny I could recognise. A Pidgeotto suddenly leaped at me while I was training on Three Island (the Bond Bridge area). I saw the stars, the alternate coloration, and happily caught it without any problems. It became my main flyer and "team support" Pokémon, whenever I was training weaklings, I brought Pidgeot (whose level eventually reached into the high nineties) to take over the fight if things got messy.

Some later time on FireRed, at a place I can't remember, I found my second Shiny: Pidgey. Can't remember what I did with it, it didn't seem as special when I already had got a shiny Pidgeot, trained for years as a member of my main party.

I've also found a shiny Starly and Kricketune on Pearl, and a Lotad on Emerald. Apart from the last one, the shinies I find tend to be quite boring ones.

 

[Vashimus]

I was breeding a Jynx and Hypno to get a good nature to train in HeartGold, when after a bunch eggs, this little baby popped out.

It's hard to tell here, but when you've already hatched Smoochum after Smoochum and seen the sprite over and over again, you pick up on the smallest little color difference. I checked the summary to confirm and sure enough it was shiny. It had a Quirky nature, but I was so ecstatic I didn't even care. I named her Shiva, EV trained her, leveled her up, and now she resides in my Diamond, my Pokemon bank. Ice Beam, Psychic, Lovely Kiss, Focus Blast.

I've found other shinies like a Red Gyarados in Platinum (I shit you not. I was so pissed lol), a Shiny Poliwag and Psyduck IN THE SAME DAY while EV training in Heart Gold, and a shiny Liepard randomly in Black. But Jynx will always be my favorite.

 

[Gokuzbu]

I found a shiny Slugma in Emerald at that place where there's all volcanic ash everywhere. Its funny because it looks like a Slugma covered in ash. When I first saw it me and my friend were going crazy and we were in utter disbelief. I thought shinies were just a myth lol. Sadly I don't have it today, I traded it away

 

[Millky95]

I'm a classic Red Gyarados man. I saw it and fell in love with it. Used it every game I had for ages.

Outside of that was when I playing Emerald and I was board so i thought I would bike ride from the starter city to Lillycove City. Just before I arrived, got another battle and all I could think was how close I was to finishing my mini challenge and suddenly there it was. A Shiny Shupett. I thought I had no balls but I had a fair few ultra balls and sure enough, it was mine. I cloned him like 50 times to make sure I always had one.

 

[megayokim]

My first shiny that wasnt pretty much handed to me was in turnback cave,i found it after i was trying to get giratinas griserous orb in platinum and had no idea how turnback cave worked and thought going foward right and then left would somehow work for me. About 2 hours later and at least hundreds of golbats and bronzongs later i saw a shiny bronzor and was so damn happy and now im thankful for my childish ignorance and not resorting to the internet.It kinda sucks that i dint have it anymore but he'll always be my favourite shiny and my first after going through tons of games and now i have at least 30 so i like to think of him as the start of my good luck.

 

[The Shadow Knight]

My first shiny experience was with good ol' Red Gyarados. I never really used it in any of my runs for anything other than a HM slave. My first random shiny was a Voltorb in Ruby in the Mauville Power Plant thingy. Since then I encoutered a fair amount of random shinies.

 

[cb aaron judge]

first one was with tentacool in my copy of sapphire, can't remember exactly where i caught it though because hoenn has so many water routes, and later on, when i was looking for nidoran-m on route 3 in leaf green, i encountered a shiny mankey, needless to say, it took over the spot i wouldve used nidoran-m in, and it didnt fail to impress (its now a primeape btw)

 

[zdrup15]

Well, looking at all of these stories makes me confirm my thoughts: I'm really unlucky with shinies...

I've played Pokemon ever since good old Pokemon Red and, outside of Red Gyarados, I found a grand total of one shiny Poke. It was in Emerald. I had just defeated the E4 and for the first time I thought I'd try to complete the Pokedex so I checked and the first Poke I needed to caught was a Skitty. I headed to Rustboro and went north to find it. While looking for it, a Whismur appeared. I immediatly realized it wasn't a regular Whismur and caught it. I forgot about Skitty and went to the PC to confirm it was shiny. Then I trained it all the way to Exploud, using my best TMs on it (I never used any TMs before BW because I thought one day I might need them for better Pokes). Shiny Exploud was then always on my team in Pokemon Emerald.

I've caught a ton of shinies after that thanks to Pokeradar because, you know, if I were to trust luck to get another shiny I'd still have to wait a few more years for it. But it's obviously not the same feeling. Pokeradar shinies are expected, random shinies are the best surprise.

 

[Mulan15262]

Excluding the red Gyrados in the Lake of Rage, the only shiny I've ever caught was a shiny Drilbur. I was breeding for an Excadril with good IVs and an Adamant nature, and then an egg hatched. Inside the egg was a shiny Drilbur.

I traded it away for a Tornadus when I found that it had a Modest (-Atk, +SpA) nature, which was probably the dumbest thing I've done in any pokemon game.

I've yet to obtain any other shinies, and never use repels so I may find a shiny pokemon sooner, but I never have, even though the statistics say that I should have encountered another one a couple thousand wild battles ago.

 

[LilOu]

Well, looking at all of these stories makes me confirm my thoughts: I'm really unlucky with shinies...

I've played Pokemon ever since good old Pokemon Red and, outside of Red Gyarados, I found a grand total of one shiny Poke. It was in Emerald. I had just defeated the E4 and for the first time I thought I'd try to complete the Pokedex so I checked and the first Poke I needed to caught was a Skitty. I headed to Rustboro and went north to find it. While looking for it, a Whismur appeared. I immediatly realized it wasn't a regular Whismur and caught it. I forgot about Skitty and went to the PC to confirm it was shiny. Then I trained it all the way to Exploud, using my best TMs on it (I never used any TMs before BW because I thought one day I might need them for better Pokes). Shiny Exploud was then always on my team in Pokemon Emerald.

I've caught a ton of shinies after that thanks to Pokeradar because, you know, if I were to trust luck to get another shiny I'd still have to wait a few more years for it. But it's obviously not the same feeling. Pokeradar shinies are expected, random shinies are the best surprise.

I only found one shiny Pokémon, and it is the Caterpie 8 years ago. Apart from that, not even with the Pokéradar. Not one shiny. :[